THE CORPORATE NARRATIVE
What do you think of when you hear the name Harley-Davidson? A faceless corporation, churning out motorcycles and generating revenue? Or are you transported somewhere else? Into a story of rule breakers, rebels and outlaws who flout convention? A tale with a more dynamic sense of narrative than a static balance sheet?
Say what you like about the brand itself – and for the less romantic among us Harley Davidson mainly says ‘mid-life crisis’ – but the creation of a story lends the brand a backdrop, a mythology and momentum that together help to articulate its core values and draw in its audience.
Internally too, storytelling as a means of explaining company strategy to employees and getting them on side (alignment) and inviting their feedback (engagement), is now being embraced by some of the biggest brand names on the UK and international corporate landscape.
From Virgin to Nike, from Jack Daniels to Innocent, global brands are working hard in the creation of a compelling narrative to maximise the power of the brand. But why do stories resonate so much? And are they really useful in brand communications?
“Great stories tap into everything that makes us human,” says Brian Millar, strategy director at creative strategic consultancy, Sense Worldwide. “We use stories to learn, and to experience emotions and places and situations. Most things in the world get improved on over time. Nobody will ever release the 2.0 upgrade to Hamlet.”
But it’s not just about creating warm, fuzzy entertainment value. Philip Mann, managing director of Bostock Pollitt, argues that there’s a powerful logic to the use of stories.
“Once upon a time we all told stories,” he says. “As children we learn about the world outside through our parents’ fairy tales. People tell stories like this to children because they deliver complex ideas in a simple but memorable form: think Aesop’s fables. That’s why religions use parables, and primitive tribes pass their collective learning and memory down through their tales. The same happens in companies.”
Larry Vincent is group director of strategy at Siegel + Gale, and has spent time analysing why stories carry such weight. “Stories are hard-wired into our brains,” he says. “From cognitive psychology to neurological studies on memory and information processing, the sciences are proving that storytelling is an important part of the human brain. Storytelling is a particularly powerful memory and attachment device.”
So why are they useful when it comes to branding? “Because stories connect beliefs to motivation,” he says. More than that, he adds, stories are persuasive. Research suggests people lower scepticism and are more receptive to persuasive information when the pitch is wrapped in a story. “In other words, when a story is involved, we’re open to influence. That’s why so much of advertising has headed down the narrative route, and it’s why brands can often be more effective when deemed a part of a bigger story.”
| It's not just about attracting consumers, suggests Toby Southgate, managing director at The Brand Union. “Brands build strength and recognition through clear and consistent communication of core brand assets: vision, values, essence,” he says. “This helps to articulate why consumers, partners, investors or employees should be interested in what the brand or organisation has to offer. Great brands build and tell great stories – the latter helps create the former.” He cites Apple in the Steve Jobs era; Nike “in almost everything it does” and Honda over the last decade. “But brands are often diluted through inconsistent communication, and risk being misunderstood, unappreciated, or simply overlooked. It is crucial that the right audiences are engaged with the brand and what it stands for, in order to build meaningful relationships, support or loyalty. This requires work and attention.” | |
| In that case, how should an organisation go about creating a story? “Start by looking at what defines a ‘story’,” says Alison Esse, director of The Storytellers. “Then how the art of storytelling can help build brand values and brand equity and help employees deliver the brand, consistently, to customers.”
“A brand is the sum of a million stories – the stories of every interaction that customers have with the product and service, not the one that the marketing team have dreamt up, but the real one. They are the stories, grounded in reality, that can build – or erode – trust in the brand. They are both an opportunity and a threat. Without delivery of the brand promise, any back story or creative advertising campaign can fall on fallow ground.” All of which means a brand must enjoy a high level of self-awareness before it can embark on telling its own story with confidence, argues Tim Bax, head of content at Proximity London. “Organisations cannot go around bragging about their values – who’d trust a bank that claimed to be honest, for example? Values must be intrinsic, and stakeholders will make their judgements based on the way brands behave, and the stories that grow up around them.” But the truth doesn’t need to be nothing but the truth. In fact, most branding experts agree that – while mythology and selectivity can cement a good brand story – stories require simply a strong kernel of truth at the very least. |
The Innocent storyDrinks company Innocent has been associated with storytelling since its inception: witness the oft-cited story of how they began – asking customers at a music festival to vote on whether they should give up their day jobs by throwing their empties into either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ bins. “Our story is the tale of what happened when three friends had a good idea,” says creative director Dan Germain. “We don’t have to invent a brand story, or have sessions to think of what it might be. Our story is the real story of us doing stuff. The hardest part of the last 12 years was sitting down and trying to remember everything when writing our company history. It’s much easier just to carry on making up the story up as you go along, starting tomorrow, 9am, at Fruit Towers.” |
“At the heart of the story there needs to be a truth - not necessarily a fact, but something that helps explain the universe to us,” says Sense’s Brian Millar. “In a Rolls Royce at 60 miles an hour, all you can hear is the ticking of the electric clock. My dad told me that. That’s in spite of the fact that the story only ever ran once, in an ad in The New York Times in the 1960s, when dad was a teenager in Belfast, and not in the market for a Silver Cloud. Even if you’ve never been in a Roller, you could imagine that that’s true.”
What’s in it for you
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Most commentators would agree: it’s the brands that create an honest story around what they actually deliver that win. “First Direct created a very simple story: if you don’t like banking, we’re the bank,” says Dave Roberts, creative director of Fitch. “They have stuck to their promise and even added lots of new extras into the bargain. Keeping true to what they started with won them a Cool Brands award 2010/11; in these times that’s an achievement for a bank.”
That promise of what’s to come lies at the heart of a brand’s storytelling. Because although a story has direction, it shouldn’t be boiled down to a corporate timeline, or a potted history. Adam Keal, associate director of public relations consultnacy Fishburn Hedges echoes that word of warning. “Sometimes the back story can be a hindrance – take Volkswagen’s efforts to overcome post-war prejudice when selling the Beetle in the US in the 1950s. And for Innocent, Ben & Jerry’s and Green & Blacks, their corporate back story proved a challenge when they came to sell out to major multinationals like Coca Cola, Unilever and Cadbury (now Kraft). In the main, they handled these challenges well – but the change of ownership brought with it big questions about how they’d be able to live up to their past in the future. |
“Any corporate storytelling, especially if it’s focused on where a business has come from, needs to have one eye on the future,” he adds. “Don’t allow a back story to restrain you when there is a sudden change in corporate strategy. You need to respect the past, not be stuck in it.”
Harriette Hobbs is from copywriting and communications agency Stratton Craig and comes at the issue from a writer’s perspective. “Storytelling doesn’t necessarily have to be the history of the brand although this often resonates, especially in today’s climate when heritage and longevity are attractive to consumers. It could also be stories of people within the business. A story is a way to engage with people and find them where they are. It’s about using the art of telling a story –passion, description – to engage with your audience.”
Thinking of the story as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself, is crucial. Leeat Racs is project director of branding consultancy Sundance and she urges organisations to leverage their brand stories in order to differentiate. “Dyson and Virgin are both great examples of brands that have continually leveraged their brand stories to carve out a real point of difference. Dyson’s story orbits around a passion to pursue the best of engineering, inspiring its employees to innovate, and instilling trust and confidence among consumers. Virgin’s story orbits around challenging the status quo, making it an employer of choice for many brave and bold job seekers and an aspirational brand for many consumers.
Transmitting story through copy
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“But simply having a brand story is not enough. How the brand story is brought to life is paramount. First, the story must capture the brand’s heartland (its core values and beliefs) in order to feel substantial and meaningful. And second, the story must create a contextual backdrop that gives the brand values a contemporary relevance.”
Although predominant as an advertising or marketing tool, a brand story shouldn’t just be about projecting a favourable image to the outside world. For Philip Mann, the brand story is something that should live in and among an organisation’s workforce.
“Every company has its official story. Most of the time employees can live with it. When the chasm between the truth and the party line becomes too wide to bridge, anti-stories are the result. If a new vision of ‘the sort of company we are’ is written but bears no relation to reality you’re back to page one.”
He has three golden rules for corporate storytelling. “One, don’t tell tales. The best thing you can do with your company’s stories is listen to them, resist the temptation to tidy them up, and put them in the staff magazine. The original versions are powerful precisely because they are a bit raw around the edges.
“Two, keep testing the official story against the unofficial ones. The closer your official corporate communications are to what’s really going on, the more credibility they will have, and the fewer antistories you’ll face.
“And three, a fable will always work better than a diktat. They’re spoken rather than written down, and they’re always personal to the teller. The problem with most traditional corporate communications is that they issue an edict first, then follow it with a barrage of rational justification that opens the issue up, rather than closing it down. Fables are quite the opposite.
“So story telling starts with listening. You may hear something to your advantage.”
